British Company Donates Tech to Fight Child Porn

Icmec says the new video fingerprinting technology F1 will help global law enforcement track and remove child porn from the internet.

Icmec

A British company says it is donating technology to “fingerprint” child-pornography videos, to speed investigations and potentially block similar files from being posted on the Internet.

The company, Friend MTS Ltd., is donating the forensic technology to the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (Icmec), which will distribute it to law-enforcement officials around the world, Internet providers, online platforms, and agencies that fight the sexual abuse of children.

“This was a chance for us to do some good and get some validation,” said Charlie Tillinghast, chief executive of Friend MTS, which has 30 employees. Friend MTS uses the same technology to block pirated videos of major sports events, said Tillinghast. The technology being donated is part of that program, he said.

More than 104 million child pornography still images have been reviewed by the U.S. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, a sister organization to Icmec, since it was created in 2002. In recent years, however, child pornography has largely shifted to video, much of it recorded and uploaded via smartphones, said Ernie Allen, the CEO of Icmec.

Friend MTS’s software works by examining videos seized by law enforcement and noting patterns, which can be used to identify copies or partial copies of videos on hard drives or online. Because data about the videos can be pooled, law enforcement agencies share information, saving time. Online services can use the data to filter and block the content. “Having the ability to match video content across platforms is really the Holy Grail,” said Allen.

“It’s going to make a big difference,” said Michael Moran, head of Interpol’s Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Unit. “It’s a bigger issue than just law enforcement, and it’s great to see industry stepping up to do their part.”

The dashboard for the F1 video fingerprinting technology.

Icmec

The donation is modeled on Microsoft’s 2012 gift of the software program PhotoDNA to help law enforcement agencies perform similar fingerprinting for still images. “We’re excited and encouraged when we see new tools come out,” said David Finn, executive director and associate general counsel of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit.

Individual agencies sometimes use similar software but without access to the universal database. Moran says his Interpol department has assisted in the rescue of more than 4,000 children from sexual abuse; software plays a big role in those cases by helping law enforcement make sense of evidence, he said.

Operation Underground Railroad, a nonprofit run by former federal agent Timothy Ballard, uses hashing technology from the Child Rescue Coalition to track the sharing of child porn. Ballard says his organization, which uses online clues to set up sting operations with local law enforcement, has helped to rescue 35 children this year.